Well since you asked, I'll share some of the main points of my 'story'.
I had a fantastic childhood, growing up in a neighborhood with many kids around my age. We were almost always found together riding bikes, playing sports, and just hanging out. They were all fantastic good hearted people. We were never the sort to do anything truly bad or dangerous. About the worst thing we ever did was start a fire in the back yard so we could cook some worms. One of the neighbors was a volunteer fire fighter, and his son got in a whole heap of trouble for that one, lol. The only other thing that really stood out from my childhood was a general inability to relate to most other kids. I was always more serious, focused, contemplative, and perceptive. At the time, I felt sort of like I was an adult in a kids body. Actually, I even remember being confused by some of the adults around me acting what I felt was 'childish', and didn't understand how they could be that old and still act like children. Don't get me wrong, I was very much a kid. I loved running around, playing constantly, daydreaming. I lied when I was caught doing things I shouldn't, or breaking something around the house. I just seemed to see the world from a perspective that was very different from most of the people around me. One example would be as a 3 year old, I have a very vivid memory of being in the basement or our home. My brother had just been born. This was the first time I could ever remember being in the basement all alone without my parents. I felt a moment of loneliness, and like I wasn't that important to them anymore. But then, I remember clearly having the thought that I needed to be strong and learn to be okay on my own, because my little brother was the one that needed the attention now. From that point forward, I don't recall ever having felt jealous of not receiving attention from others.
One other thing of note was that around 11-13 I had my first experience of what I'll call soul recognition. It was a company get together for my father. We were at the weekend place of one of his co-worker. It was on a lake. We were swimming, playing badminton, various other games. I was extraordinarily shy, but I silently took a liking to another girl that was there that was around my age. I kept looking at her, trying to figure out what it was about her that had me intrigued. Then, at one point when we were swimming, we had both gone under the water and then resurfaced simultaneously. As our eyes open, we were looking directly at each other, about 10 feet away from each other, and I felt like I had been struck by lightning. I didn't know what the hell had happened. Only came to understand it later on in life.
I graduated High School in the early 90's. Around this time, I became very interested in spirituality. I had grown up in a somewhat religious family, went to catholic school through 4th grade. This experience honestly turned me away from religion. I never encountered any people that I knew to be truly bad, but I was also starkly aware the incongruencies between what was preaches and how they actually acted. In other words, I believed strongly in the spirit of goodness, but didn't care for the specific frameworks I had encountered to that point. My introduction into spirituality came as a result of my interest in being better at sports. I think it may have been a book on the mental aspects of golf, which got into the subject intense focus. From there I stumbled across works on hypnosis and meditation. The book that really grabbed my attention within this first year of exploration was Autobiography of Yogi by Yogananda. I didn't know what to make of it, but I was utterly intrigued by it. During the next 2 years, my first 2 years in college, I spent more time in the library and in my dorm room reading about spirituality and religion than I did studying, and it wasn't even close. That's probably why I flunked out of school, lmao.
I had no idea what I was going to do with my life at this point. I ended up back at my parents house. They were so unbelievably patient with me, maybe feeling sorry for my failure and not wanting to pressure me at the time. For the next 3 months, I lived without any obligations whatsoever. I slept and woke when I want, and came and went as I pleased, without a word of protest or pressure from either of my parents. It was at this time that I made the decision that it was more important who I was (the type of person I was) than what I did. I gave no thought to what the future would bring, and focused my full attention on the moment. Each bite of food I took, I savored. Each step and each breath I took, I felt. I spent an hour sitting in the living room, but connecting and communicating with the trees in the yard. I could 'feel' them. I was in a state of pure bliss. Pure, complete bliss, 24/7. Coinciding with this, I was devouring the books Bringers of the Dawn, and Earth by Barbara Marciniak. I recall reading them a paragraph or a sentence at a time, and then spending 5-10 minutes absorbing what I had read, meditating on it. Also at that time, I found myself closely monitoring my thoughts and feelings. I was sometimes spending hours sitting in one spot, addressing and sending love to any thoughts which arose that created a feeling of resistance in me, until I felt completely and utterly open. At a certain point, I felt I must be enlightened. I didn't know anything more than I had known previously, but I felt as if I was no longer really a person. I was just life, flowing with the rest of life. There was no resistance within me whatsoever. My mind, my emotions, my physical body were all utterly at ease. This is a period of time that I cherish very much, and will always be grateful for.
Eventually something had to give since I obviously couldn't live with my parents forever without paying rent or going back to school. So I got a job. Of course, I ended up in a job with one of the most negative people I've ever met, lol. For the first six months it had no impact on me whatsoever, and I was still walking on water. Gradually though, imperceptibly, it wore on me, and I eventually found myself no longer walking on water, without any clear sense of when the change had happened. One of my more challenging traits to deal with in this life has been my extreme stubbornness. Because of this stubbornness, I couldn't bring myself to just leave the job, as both mental and emotional logic would dictate. I stuck it out, and am still employed at the same place. Mr negativity's negativity eventually caught up to him, and he lost his job, but he won that initial battle against me, and I'm not sure I've recovered from even though I outlasted him.
I have had some other notable things happen in my work life. On a professional level, I came in without any experience, in a realm where the next newest person had been there for 5 years. I've always made a point to do my job better than I'm asked or expected to do it, and to disregard the standards that are given to me in favor of my own standards. This has resulted in me being promoted multiple times. I've turned down several offers of advancement that didn't feel appropriate to me, and have been given others without even needing to interview. I'm currently a production manager, a position I was given outright without applying or interviewing. I seem to have an abnormal ability amongst my peers to be simultaneously more attentive to details, and more aware and understanding of the big picture. None of this is anything I take credit for. It's just another instance and example of being different, and seeing things differently from those around me. Of course, I do have a drive to do things well, and I now feel a great responsibility to my team, and all those I work with, and so I put forth a great deal of effort to be kind and supportive, and to make everyone's job as easy as it can possibly be. So it's by no means effortless.
The single most impactful experience of my work life was another soul recognition experience. This is the one that helped me make sense of my childhood experience. I was working as a trainer for my department, but for some reason had been asked to assist with an interview. Much like before, the moment our eyes met the world stopped for a moment. I literally didn't even hear her name as she was being introduced, because I had been knocked silly. I felt like my heart had exploded, and momentarily considered dropping to my knees and professing my love for her. She ended up being hired as a temp (I wasn't the person who hired her). I came to find out that she was in a relationship with a man she had a child with. This was pretty devastating to me. We worked together professionally for about 6 months, though those months were really like a form of torture to me. I couldn't sleep at night. I couldn't look at her at work. I had such strong emotions flowing through me. When she finally left the company after her contract was up, I thought...okay...maybe it will be better if I'm not seeing her anymore. Turned out not to be the case. I got to the point that I felt there was a serious possibility of losing my sanity. I couldn't sleep at night. I could think of anything except her. I had this thought in my head constantly that I just needed to tell her what had happened. I ended up getting her phone number through someone else at worked, called her, and told her what had happened when we met. The same thing happened to her...go figure. She had just broken up with her boyfriend. She said she'd explained her experience to a friend, and that friend told her it sounded like 'true love'. She was understandably confused at having intense feelings for someone she didn't know. They must have gotten to be too much for her, because a couple of weeks later she disconnected her phone. I found out later through someone else that she was okay, but just felt like the feelings weren't something she wanted to deal with. We've not had any contact since. This was very difficult for me to get over, but these many years later I'm very grateful for the experience, and the change it affected in me. Ever since that heart explosion, I feel everything very differently than I did prior to it.
I had another relationship that began at work, which was possibly even more difficult. I try not to label relationships, but this one had all the hallmarks of a deeply karmic relationship. I was so completely in love with her. So much so that I allowed myself into a situation that I I had no business being in. I initially had no interest in this person. Then I started noticing that I was getting sexually aroused at work for no apparent reason. After about a month of this happening daily, I noticed that it always happened when I was near her, even though I felt no particular sexual attraction to her. Curious about this, I started engaging her in conversation here and there. I grew compassionate towards her, and developed a very empathic connection, to the point that I'd go into the bathroom to cry without know why, and then find out that I was picking up this emotion from her.
For some reason, I have the feeling that there's nothing to be gained from going into more detail on this one. Suffice to say that we both acted in ways that were unbecoming of us. I certainly made choices that I'm not proud of. I still have pain and hold some resentment about this that needs to be worked through.
And that brings me to the present state, which I'll have to share in a separate post, as I'm headed out to a Birthday party now. Apologies if anything I wrote above doesn't make sense. I've not had time to proof read it. In the follow up post, I'll try to capture some of the challenges of the moment, which I'd definitely appreciate feedback on from anyone who feels compelled to offer it.